She’s a PC out of necessity. There are a ton of medicine-slash-hospital related things that she uses the computer for, and many of them don’t like Macs. Now, I know ways to work around that. But that means The Wife would rely on me to do doctor things online. I think we can all agree that is less than optimal. Also, I think we can all agree that I should stay as far away from doctor things as possible.

It is for that reason that we just replaced the very old Mac she was using with a DELL Inspiron. It’s not a bad machine. My major gripe with it (aside from the fact it runs Windows, ZING!) is the touchpad. It’s so over-sensitive that if it hears a loud noise it runs off and hides under the bed.

After a week of accidently zooming when I wanted to scroll, selecting things when I wanted to scroll, and clicking on things I hadn’t even selected when I wanted to scroll, I decided to change the settings on the damn thing. In my head, that procedure went like this:

1. Find settings panel
2. Change settings for touchpad.
3. Enjoy no longer having to fight the urge to hurl the brand new computer through the window.

Obviously, since I’m writing about this on my blog, that is not how it happened.

Me: [Colorful and richly-varied insults of a mechanical nature directed at the PC]The Wife: Want me to look at it?Me: [Call into question the PC's lineage and ancestry, such as it is]The Wife: Let me see it for a second.Me: [Coyly imply that perhaps the PC was best-suited for testing aerodynamics, specifically those pertaining to defenestration]The Wife: Fine, whatever.

This scene repeated itself several times over several days. Trolling through forums, staring at option-less option panels, and various threats to turn the machine into a boat anchor all yielded nothing. It was probably a week after I first looked into changing the settings when I ran out of vituperation to hurl at the device and tossed it on the couch as I left the room in disgust.

90 seconds later this occurred:

The Wife: Hey, is this what you were looking for?Me: [Stomping into the room] I will not believe that you just found some magical panel full of pretty, colorful graphics whose sole purpose is to very simply adjust the touchpad settings.

A moment’s silence is observed while I see that, yes, she has just found some magical panel full of pretty, colorful graphics whose sole purpose is to very simply adjust the touchpad settings.

Me: [Laughter. Lots of laughter. More laughter than that. So much laughter my eyes are tearing up]The Wife: You’re only laughing because you want to scream.Me: [Nodding through even more laughter]